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The Academy of American Poets is the largest membership-based nonprofit organization fostering an appreciation for contemporary poetry and supporting American poets. For over three generations, the Academy has connected millions of people to great poetry through programs such as National Poetry Month, the largest literary celebration in the world; Poets.org, the Academy’s popular website; American Poets, a biannual literary journal; and an annual series of poetry readings and special events. Since its founding, the Academy has awarded more money to poets than any other organization.

I am amazed and thrilled by the formal sophistication and the emotional maturity of this young poet. While it is brave, and necessary, to name the names and the count the wounds of the boys who have been murdered, Donte Collins goes much deeper. He captures the trembling heart of the living boy as he walks through the world in his targeted body. “what the dead know by heart” takes us beneath the armament to the fraught existence of one who wonders “if the gun that will unmake me / is yet made;” one whose survival is conditional on another’s death, “today I did / not die . . . the bullet missed my head / and landed in another.” This is a voice to be encouraged. I look forward to reading Donte Collins in the future.

Collins sits on the youth advisory board of TruArtSpeaks, a nonprofit encouraging literacy, leadership, and social justice through the study and application of spoken word and hip-hop culture and is an editor at Button Poetry, the largest distributor of spoken word poetry in the world. Collins performs across the country and has had his work featured on AfroPunk, Elephant Journal, Feminist Culture, and more. He lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota.